Dear Editor:
Re: Teachers should quit while they're ahead, May 4.
Burnaby NOW's Our View opinion article states that teachers should "quit while they're ahead."
As a teacher, I hardly think that teachers are "ahead" right now. Teachers are:
- Fighting to protect classroom conditions that Bill 22 is proposing to remove;
- Fighting to keep specialist jobs that help struggling kids (learning support, counsellors, librarians and more);
- Fighting to keep basic bargaining rights;
- Trying to mitigate the effects of many years of cuts to education programs and supports.
The editorial states that teachers are embroiled in a "political war" where it is "about politics and not about the kids."
Actually, it is about the kids. This is where the media is getting the message wrong. Let me enlighten you if you haven't yet been informed.
I love teaching my students. I love getting to know each individual personality and seeing each progress as the year goes by. I love making connections with them, celebrating successes and enjoying the journey together.
However, when the government wants to put in rules that take away from this special relationship, I get upset. This is what is really happening. The government wants to remove conditions that ensure a good learning environment for all kids, such as class size limits. The government is doing this, despite the fact that when they removed class size limits before, the B.C. Supreme Court told them that they were illegal and unconstitutional in doing so. Yet in Bill 22, the government removes the strips, then reinstates them word for word.
Not only that, but the government is taking other things away as well. One of those things is called "autonomy," which covers a lot, including the teacher's right to choose what strategy is best for his/her students.
All teachers can testify that every class is different, year to year. You would think that they would all be the same, with the law of averages. However, this is not the case. Every class has a unique quality. I do not have any year that is "the same," because my students' varying personalities and ways of interacting affect that. And that is what I love about teaching - every year is new, despite teaching the same grade. The kids make the difference.
This is why teachers are upset about the misrepresentation of the current job action in the media. We do love kids. We do love it when they have fun.
So the decision to withdraw the "extra" stuff is not done without heartache. However, to sit back and let the government continue with its strips to public education would be to let the government continue to steal from our students' future potentials.
So this is why the teachers are withdrawing from voluntary activities. Not because they want to hurt the kids, but because the government is doing so, yet no one seems to notice unless the teachers stand up and protest. Since walking out was not an option (with Bill 22's punitive fines), this was the only way that teachers could make a point, without jeopardizing the students' core education.
If teachers went to "business as usual" after Bill 22 passed, would the public be aware of the issues still at stake?
We needed to get people's attention. The government gave us no other choice.
Jennifer Heighton, Burnaby teacher
